Hadrian
Blazewater Bay exploded into conflict once again as it did every night for the young scion of Hearthfire. The deck of Northfire shook violently under the feet of Hadrian Blaze, as it did so many years ago. An Ironborn longship had smashed into the side of his war galley, cutting off his ship's oars. Stef the Barber, his father's Master-at-arms, had been standing next to him when a splinter from the deck, the size of a cat, slammed right into his visor. He screamed. There was a spray of bright red blood. And with that, Hadrian became a captain at 16 years old. Just in time for the first raiders came screaming on to his deck.
The fury of battle, with dozens of northmen and ironborn ships clashing off the northern coast, was lost on Hadrian. That morning shrank to the few yards around him where the first wave of raiders met with the men of House Blaze. His shield raised in time to catch a thrown axe mid flight, though he never could remember making the decision to interpose the heavy piece of ironwood. The assailant closed, drawing another axe from his belt. He was a large, bald man, easily twice the size and age of the lordling. He wore full mail and carried a battle axe, in addition to his off hand throwing axe. But the mail was rusty and the ax was chipped and worn and the fire of the blaze burned in Hadrians belly. The battle lust his brothers would warn him about was upon him.
"Hearthfire!" Hadrian screamed, his voice cracking. He slammed his shield into the raider's face. The raider pushed Hadrian back with his smaller axe, while bringing the larger one down in an overhead slash. Hadrian slipped right, letting the axe smash to the deck. He jabbed the raider in the stomach with the edge of his shield, then cut hard into the man's leg. His longsword found the joint behind the knee, slashing through the cord and leather and flesh, turning his sword red for the first time. Hadrian heard the man curse as he stumbled and toppled over the railing on the galley. His heavy armor pulled him below the waves.
'I did him a favor,' Hadrian thought. 'I sent him to the den of his soggy God.'
His idle musing was nearly the end of him, as another throwing axe sailed over Hadrian's shoulder end over end. He stumbled back as another raider vaulted on to the deck of the ship. This one was his age, or near enough. His eyes lacked the rage of the other Ironborn streaming aboard, and an old wound left his left cheek open, exposing rotten and broken brown teeth. The boy stabbed at Hadrian with a boarding pike. Hadrian deflected the pike up with his shield, then severed his hand at the wrist. The boy screamed and crumpled to the deck, writhing over his bleeding stump. Hadrian would have finished him there, had another raider not stepped over the boy and took up the fight.
He cut left and right. Blocked high and low. His men died around him and raiders continued to push on to the war galley. Hadrian caught a raider with a bash of his shield, then buried his longsword into her breast. Her breast. The shock of bloodied and beaten women before him, her mouth open soundless pain and terror, startled Hadrian more than he could have imagined. She fell away, taking his sword with her. He had to beat a quick retreat as two more took her place. He was able to pull a sword from one of his dead brothers and continue the defense.
By the time the raiders had established a foothold on Northfire, the battle was all but lost for them. Hadrian rallied his bloodied men. The Ironborn held on to the ground they had gained, only to push back and claim more of his ship. He rallied them again. The Ironborn would counter attack fiercely. He rallied them a third time, but there were 20 of his men out of the 100 or so left. They were true men, each and every one. They were ready to lay down their lives for House Blaze and the King in the North. Hadrian wasn't as ready to die, not just yet. If this was his time, he resolved to take as many of those iron bastards down with him as he could. That's what his father would do, he told himself.
Stark's Favor, his father's vessel, fought free from the Ironborn press with her sisters, Duty and Shieldsister, and were heading north. His father was falling back. The realization should have shocked him more than it did. Even then, as now, he couldn't imagine his father was falling back to the coast, leaving his youngest to the howling raiders. Hadrian was trapped where the Ironborn arrow head had pierced into the center of the coastal fleet and enveloped it. 'They were heading back to shore,' Hadrian thought, wariness and wounds leaving him with little comprehension of his father's actions.
In this dream, the one of the battle so long ago, his father rallied the northmen and swung back around. His renewed charge sent off the Ironborn raiders back to their rocks and salt cliffs. Hadrian held the final aft deck with his remaining 5 men. The bodies of the raiders had piled high around them. Hadrian was down to his knife and a mace, his leg bleeding heavily from an unlucky wound from an unluckier attacker, returning the injury with a crushed skull.
Hadrian was never smashed across the jaw. He was never captured with his few remaining men. He was never sold into slavery a world away from the shores of Blazewater Bay. In the dream, his father and brothers leapt aboard and cut down the fleeing raiders. His father reached down a hand to his youngest boy.
"I'm proud of you, boy. Hearthfire will be forever in your debt. You held the center, when all hope was lost." Hadrian pulled himself up with his father's help and then the two embraced briefly. He looked to his father. He was immaculate. No battle or strife had touched him. As Hadrian looked on, a small finger of blood extended from his father's grey and receding hairline, sliding down his face and dripping off his chin. Jeor Blaze seemed not to mind it at all. It became a waterfall of blood when the skin began peeling away from his skull, revealing muscle and bone underneath.
"You valor will not be forgotten." Jeor Blaze boomed, unperturbed by his sloughing flesh, his bare skull smiling.
Hadrian broke away. A shadow fell upon them. The wind whistled and whipped, churned by massive leather wings. Hadrian could only watch, a spectator to someone else's story. A ball of red and green fire poured over Northfire. His father and brothers, his remaining men and his ship, the very deck under his feet, exploded. He flew high in the are, the screams of the airborne nightmares filling his ears. Filling his head. He fell, burning. The ocean rose to meet him with the feeling cold, cold water to splash his face.
"If I have to tell you to get up again, it's not water i'm using!" The cold, smelly water soaked Hadrian to the bone, leaving his roughspun tunic and trousers drenched. "I'll drown you in a bucket of piss the next time I drag you out of bed." Hadrian blinked the cool water from his eyes and pulled himself to his feet, immediately apologizing to the Valyrian.
Alo the Whip was of a height with him, but Hadrian had long learned to not make it obvious to the slave driver and slouched low before him. Alo was a Valyrian from head to toe. He had their light skin and hair, with a pair of eyes as violet as a pansies. He wore a light green vest that left his massive, scarred arms bear. His namesake hung at his belt, still rolled. The Whip rarely used the weapon. He often didn't need too. The smoky silver glean at its tip was fear itself to the slaves around base camp, and Alo could cut the wings off a fly with the vicious cord if had the mind. The most important lesson each slave learned were the personalities or lack thereof borne in the Valyrian masters. Which ones would give you an extra spoon of soup or heel of bread. Which ones would let you take an extra water break or which ones would beat you for asking. Alo was not one of the ones they asked for a little extra of anything.
With a push, Hadrian was marched out of the slave barracks. "You are to join the others on the north ridge today. You are going to eat any stone left in the path of the road at nightfall." Alo commanded, giving Hadrian a sharp shove which each other step. Hadrian could understand the Valyrian speech of the fair overlords well enough, but it was still awkward on his own tongue, even now. He had yet to meet any of them who had bothered to learned the barbaric tongue of Westeros, although Stig and Hizdar knew it well enough. They were only slaves, though.
"Yes, sir." He replied quietly in the dragon tongue. They were the first words he had learned when the Ironborn had sold him at the Port of Oros in the heart of Valyria, all those years ago, along with 'I'm sorry.' and 'Thank you, kind Master'. The slave life had few enough distractions, so mastering High Valyrian was a task his mind could work while his body was used up. Hadrian had already lost a toe and a finger to mishaps in his work, so gaining a language or two was the next best thing to replacing them.
The Valyrians had maintained their might across Essos through the use of sorcery and slave labor and dragons. He had seen the latter often enough. Lordlings would come swooping in unannounced on the backs of their overly large lizards, inspecting the progress of work and the condition of the slaves to report on it back at the freehold. Soon enough they would be back on the wing and gone from sight. But while those monsters sat the ground near Hadrian and the other slaves...It was beyond fear. It was loathing and dread and death and fire and blood. It had happened more times than Hadrian could recall, but it was not something he could get used to. The smallest of them could have burned Hearthfire to the ground with a single breath and swallowed their aurochs and fishing boats whole. Dragons were not above roasting a slave and eating it right there in front of its master and the slaves driver if they strayed too close or looked too appetizing. The rider would give the driver a bronze penny for the lost property, a mere formality, then go back to their work.
'There's no question why they are the masters and we are the slaves,' He mused darkly, eyeing the high cliffs outside of their camps.
The north ridge was the final span of road to be laid between the town of Myr and the greater Essos roadways. Two years of baking suns and broken fingers had culminated to these last few weeks. The slow river of human property flowed up the steep hill from base camp. Lyseni and Summer Islanders. Copper-skinned Dothraki and Ghiscari. There was one other Westerosi. An Andal by his look and well into his forties. His tongue had been cut out for reasons unknown to Hadrian, so the conversation was poor. When work brought them nearby, Hadrian would tell the Andal stories of his home and family. That always seemed to cheer up the grey beard. Hadrian's own crew was long dead, captured, or had been sold elsewhere.
'Thomas only died a year ago. Or near enough.' Hadrian thought as he crested the ridge. The stone carts had already been lined up to be filled with the loose stones that littered the intended path. The land was dry as bone and the sun baked the thin sandy soil. The Essos roadway lay just down the other side of the north ridge. When they were connected, he and the others would be carted off to the next project. That was the pattern for the past 8 years.
He hadn't seen his Andal friend this morning and he wasn't among those already set about gathering stone. Stig, a summer islander merchant who had been 'picked up' on their way to Valyria after the battle was hefting rock after rock into a near by cart each the size of a dog. The near decade of work turned the soft aristocrate into a rock hard golem.
There were also two riders at the ridge peak. One was Viseries, the Dragonlord who oversaw this road project. He rode a magnificent white destrier that matched his long silky hair. Hadrian never saw him this far from his silken command pavillion. But if Hadrian could make time with the women and comforts he had seen carried in there, he wouldn't have left very often either.
The man next to him was a new face. He looked like he could have been of Westeros, but he had made that mistake before. He wore a long, heavy, red leather cloak. His hands and feet were covered in more red leather armor. A long spear was strapped to his saddle with a small bit of red cloth tied to the end just under the red metal point around the red wood shaft. He wore a long beard that was as red as blood. Under the sweltering summer sun, the man did not sweat or display any uncomfort with being bundled up warmly as he was.
Hadrian set to clearing stones while he tried to listen to him. The clashing and smashing of the work around him made the task impossible. After an hour or so, the red man looked away from the Valyrian to the slaves. His eyes settled on Hadrian and didn't waver. Hadrian returned the stare, the man's red eyes burrowing into his own. A quiet discomfort washed over the slave. He felt the man looking him over. His rags. His browned, scarred flesh. His heart. His soul. His fears. He hadn't felt this exposed, even when on the auction block.
"Slave. Westerosi. Come here at once." The Valyrian barked. Hadrian dropped his rocks into the cart and approached. He saluted the Overseer, but his eyes couldn't leave the stranger. Against the man's chest hung an amulet with the largest ruby Hadrian had ever seen. It was in the shape of a heart, with gold flames licking around the edges.
"How many I serve the Masters?" Hadrian asked in Valyrian.
"How old are you, slave?" The red man spoke the common speech of the Seven Kingdoms. Hadrian couldn't say where his accent was from, but it wasn't the North.
"Four and Twenty, ser."
"I'm no knight, praise be to God. What's your name?"
"Hadrian. Formerly of House Blaze."
The red man looked to the Valyrian. "What is he going to cost me?" This seemed to surprise the overseer. He considered Hadrian for a moment.
"A good pair of hands and a strong back like his? I will want at least a dragon." Viseries words were the closest thing Hadrian had heard to a compliment since he was enslaved. But it was a ruse. No slave was worth that much. Hadrian looked over his fellows still hefting the stones.
"Red man. May I say something?" Hadrian quickly spoke in the common tongue. Viseries looked surprised. As if a chair had just spoken while he was sitting on it. His eyes grew narrow and his hand reached for the scourge at his belt. The red man raised a hand quickly, giving Viseries pause.
"Speak."
Hadrian had to think carefully. He didn't know this man well and if he said the wrong thing, he could be left behind. He couldn't imagine a scenario where Viseries didn't have a driver beat him bloody for offering his help to the foreigner over his master.
"No slave here is worth a whole bit of gold. I don't know what you want with me, but there are others I know. Others from Westeros. Four slaves is surely worth a Gold Dragon."
An expression chiseled out of rock laid across the red man's face. His red eyes burned into Hadrian, considering him. Hadrian hadn't stood this tall since the battle.